Ah, right. Why let you use the tech that’s already built-in and designed for just that, when they can call it something else and charge you more for it?

Fucking savages.

Ah… yeah I forgot. My bad.

And what is the problem with VoLTE anywhere? Just curious.

Looks phenomenal.

I was recently so excited to discover Fortress Forever also, which is the old TFC game. I dominated in that.

Swimming Nougat.

Did I do that right?

The Apple App Store is a cesspool. Has been for years. It’s just pushing short-term games with gobs of micro transactions by the hundreds. That’s almost all you see. Tons and tons of it.

That blog post is such a heap of shit. Do they think they’re fooling anyone? It’s politik-speak. Nobody believes them, yet they bother to make those statements anyway.

What about the fact that when I buy a device I fucking own it. I now should be able to do whatever I want.

It’s so pathetic. And yeah, I’m not going to buy a new phone for a very, very, very long time. I’ll stock up on Android phones that are decent but still have the freedom to do what I want.

This shit is obnoxious and if we really want to fight it, we need a serious, globally unified boycott that gets advertised and shared daily. If successful, the device sales would drop drastically and the registrations of higher Android versions, usage etc. data should all show they are throwing away their user base.

Because literally one and only one thing ever matters: the almighty dollar. So take your dollars back, make them lose money, and have a very well-established unified protest where they can see the losses are directly tied to their decision to take away ownership. This is the only way that POSSIBLY, we may gain back what we have now.

Also - on the same front, a companion campaign could be active to persuade any hardware maker to fully allow custom ROMs and GSIs to be installed. No e of this hacking and exploiting… fully endorsed but I would not expect support and that’s fine. Hardware warranty is ok. But anyone who wants should be able to change their OS and install whatever they want.

One day you’re gonna see big manufacturers like Dell, HP etc. make consumer lines of products that literally won’t run any OS other than Windoze, because of an agreement with Microshaft. That’s their next step I absolutely guarantee it. Try to install Linux, and the BIOS will be programmed to reject it.

Because money. Sorry, not because money; because MORE money. Sorry, not because more money; because more and more and more money. Sorry, not because more and more and more money; because insatiable greed for every farthing they can fuck out of your goddamn pores.

But back to this architecture: if there is a financial incentive for a few manufacturers to make devices we can own and install our choice of Android, they would have at least one demographic guaranteed to buy. That pressure may or may not change Google’s mind, but it would open up a whole world of FOSS options or even paid versions, to compete with the giant.

Thoughts?

Most people don’t care about their privacy anymore. They don’t think there’s any value in it.

Indeed, it has. If we really want it to stop, there needs to be a boycott on buying new devices. Only buy used, and encourage others as well. Educate them how google is turning android slowly into another iOS with closed walls.

I’ve tested quite a few and most of the differences lay in what kinds of customizations have they built into the settings module. And most of them are aesthetic or things like easy switches. There’s really not much difference at the functional level, except for some come with MicroG integrated already which simply saves you time and occasional nuisance of installing it. But really, whatever you can find that works is good. Ironically, Lineage itself is the most vanilla and least gadgety; most of the others are built on either Lineage or Cyanogen. Understandable since they were early progenitors of the custom ROM if I’m not mistaken.

crDroid is a really good one. I have it on a few devices. Quite a bit older even than yours and it runs beautifully. One of my faves.

Try Iodé, try crDroid, ResurrectionRemix, Havoc, or Bliss. They all have nice features to offer.

I’m running /e on a Galaxy Note 4 and it’s nice but nothing magical.

/e and others like it are just flavors. I happen to like Bliss and crDroid and several others as well. But they aren’t exactly unique, so whatever ROM will work for what you need is what you should go with.

Google made Android to get a foothold into the market. The free and open model was only because they were up against Apple. Don’t nobody kid yourself into thinking their intent was all along anything other than being able to rake it in and have total control just like Apple. They just needed an in to get big. Now Android is huge and now they wanna slam the door and lock everyone down and start really fucking the cash out of everyone’s asses.

Are we posting rooted and ROM’ed phones here? ‘Cuz I have a cabinet of shock and awe available lol.

Every for-profit entity hates FOSS as a concept, and they hate all the hard-working developers who put in time voluntarily. They hate all of it with a seething passion.

They’re not tightening Android up to protect users, they’re doing it to abuse and exploit them and restrict their ability to circumvent the data mining they conduct. There’s only one way they’d theoretically stop this course of action, and that’s if sales PLUMMET. Which won’t happen because the portion of people willing to abstain from new phone purchases to fight this is minimal.

There are millions of terrible trends that the consumer market has allowed to happen simply because the vast majority of consumers will bend over, drop trow, lube themselves up and say “Go ahead, I’m ready!” If we united and made an example of one brand and got even a six-month period of a drop in sales by 50% or more, they would beg us to tell them what do we want in return for buying again. We could have all the control we want, but people just don’t have spines.

Why has every company in the world turned pure evil?

FYI except for some phones like prepaid cheapies, Motorola always issues the unlock code. I’ve done it on a dozen different Motorola phones. It’s a fairly quick procedure.

Honestly it has surprised me given the giant plunge in quality that they took around the time of the first Razr until the early Droid units. They seriously dropped the ball and I had pretty much written them off. But nowadays their devices are absolutely beautiful. I’ve changed to custom ROM probably more Motorola units than any other, that’s not to say because of not liking them; I don’t like any stock rom. But Motorolas are just really nice phones. As a supplemental device to my primary phone I use also a Moto G Stylus 5G 2023. The XT2315-1. I’m actually about to ROM Iode onto there soon. But it’s a terrific phone. Just a little skinner than I’m comfortable with but I just put it in a bulky case and it’s fine.

Just thought I’d let you know, because you seemed to express apprehension at the idea.

Any Android I can’t either root or change the ROM I will never use. Period.